


Moons Out Of Sync

by SeventhAgent



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Full Moon, Mild Blood, Neverland, Organization XIII (Kingdom Hearts), POV First Person, RokuShi Day 2018, Stargazing, someone clean out Roxas's mouth with a big ol bar of soap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeventhAgent/pseuds/SeventhAgent
Summary: Xion's very excited about the moon. Roxas doesn't understand why--it's just a big, dumb, heart shaped rock in the sky, isn't it? Right? (Rokushi Day 2018)





	Moons Out Of Sync

 

Xion was the first to find them, those odd moons out of sync across the worlds. Me, I don't look at the sky much. This is gonna sound weird, but the size of it really gets to me. Stare straight ahead or look down, and you'll see an ending--a wall, a city skyline, a mountain range, pavement, staircases, whatever. The sky goes on without you. That scares me.

I'd just gotten slapped back and forth for a few hours by a Darkside in Twilight Town, so I wasn't feeling so hot when Xion showed up. The bruises were gone. The aches weren't. Nobody tells you that about the way Cure spells handle pain, or the way they don't. It clings to you like mud. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night feeling like the Heartless you fought eight hours ago just cut your forehead open.

That's life, I guess. I've never known anything else.

Anyway, Xion showed up and I was just sitting down in front of the Twilight Town Station, feeling like I lost a fight with the inside of a garbage truck. She was smiling. It's hard not to smile when she's smiling. Believe me, I was trying pretty hard back then. This was early on in my life with the Organization.

"Hey," I said, "what're you up t--" and she took a handful of my cloak hem in her hand, pointed at the open Corridor she just came from.

"There's a--above, in the sky?" she stammered. "A moon!"

"So I've heard."

"This isn't a joke! This is serious!"

"We see it whenever we go outside," I said. "I remember."

"It's _round_ , Roxas. A round moon!"

Okay, that gave me pause. The moon's shaped like a heart. Everybody knows that. It hangs in the sky above the World That Never Was, this improbably shaped hunk of cratered yellow, wreathed in purplish stuff. You can't avoid looking at it, this great reminder of the thing that we don't have: hearts.

Kingdom Hearts, watching all us ants down below trying to please it. A big, cratered asshole.

Aching, I stood up. This might be a big deal after all. "Have you told Axel? Saix? Anybody?"

"Why would I tell them?"

"It's another moon, and it looks wrong. Don't you think it could be a threat?"

"Not really. Roxas, we've been to, like, five castles, haven't we?"

I'd lost track. "Sounds about right."

"You don't see me crying to Axel about seeing another castle, do you? Ooooo, the curse of the castle clones!" Xion wiggled her fingers. "There can only be one! All replicas must be destroyed!"

"You _are_ in a good mood." I stood by her now, just a hand away. I'd been thinking a lot about that recently, about how far away or how close I was standing from her. I never wanted to be too far away, right? But at the same time, I hated being too close. What if she thought I was a weirdo for getting all up in her face? It was dumb, didn't make any logical sense. Maybe I'd talk to Axel about it, get his advice. He always seemed to know the score.

Xion rolled her eyes. "You're being such a grump. I'm going to show you a wonder from beyond the pale."

"The pale what?"

"It's an expression. Don't you read?"

"I read a lot!"

Xion put her hands on her hips. "Outside of manga, Roxas."

"Manga is literature. Listen, I just read this little book called _Uzumaki_? By Junji Ito? It was art." There isn't much manga in the Castle. That's one of the few I could find. Something about it really appealed to me. Maybe the way it blended really stupid stuff with real nightmares. I feel pretty stupid _and_ like I'm a nightmare a lot of the time, so. Hey. Right?

Xion nodded. "That's the one with the evil spirals?"

"Yeah."

"And those girls get in a fight with, uh, their hair."

"Okay, I'm going to stop you there, because that whole thing is clearly about vanity, as in, uh." Vanity as in what? "As in _the human condition._ And the Nobody condition, too. Conditions all around."

Xion smiled. "K." She was the only person I ever knew who could verbally say "K." Fucking uncanny.

"If you're so smart, what does 'beyond the pale' even mean?"

"Beyond the pale of," Xion paused. "Beyond the. Beyond your pale...cheeks. Of your butt."

"Just beyond that? My butt's not a huge distance to cross."

Xion mumbled something I couldn't hear. Then: "Alright, know what?" With that, she snatched my hand in hers and pulled. Before I could stop her she was dragging me all along the tiles of the Clocktower Courtyard, kicking, staring at the clocktower. "We're going to go look at the cool moon that you will definitely like okay _now right now we're_ ** _doing_** _this we're_ ** _making this happen_**."

"RTC? Don't we gotta RTC?"

"Probably," said Xion, we reached the Corridor, and then we were off.

A note on the Corridors real fast, because there's been some confusion with some of the lesser Nobodies and Demyx: you walk in, and something happens. Then you're there. That "something happens" can be any number of things. Maybe you'll be in a dark forest. Maybe you'll find yourself surrounded by tacky dancing insignias. Maybe you'll be surrounded by images of people you love congratulating you for something you can't even remember doing.

We didn't have anything in-between this time. It was just a little *pop* and we were there.

 _There_ here means Neverland, or what little of Neverland the Organization wanted me to see--that collection of tiny islets on the edge of the great green mass. There weren't any flying fairies around to meet me this time, and a good thing too: if the Corridor was easy this time, the landing wasn't. The Corridor spat us out onto the rocks like a nauseous kid, skipping over the ocean three, four times.

(Tinkerbell, you lucked out. Didn't get hit by two flying Nobodies in cloaks. Good on you, you magnificent tsundere.)

We slapped against the ocean, tasted salt, slapped again, and our cloaks fluttered against one another like we were two wet crows. We hit the last rock--the big one--with a real _thwack_ that brought a gush of blood to my mouth. Another taste of salt. Little points of stone dug into my hands. More salt.

I glanced at Xion to see if she was moving. My eyes watered. Everything blurred. I couldn't tell anything about Xion, so I turned and spat more blood onto the rocks.

I was out of casts for any Cure spells, and the Darkside had taken all of my Ethers and Potions. This was it.

This was it. Here on a bunch of rocks on my least favorite world, miles away from where anything interesting happened, worlds away from any of the Nobodies who minded that we were gone.

Obviously, I didn't die. That's the thing about first person narratives, right? Like, if I'd died, I wouldn't be telling you this story unless I cheated somehow. Or maybe that's the twist. Maybe I'm a ghost or a clone, or maybe I'll just stop telling the story in the middle of the paragraph like some kind of complete

* * *

 

Sensations at first. Nothing more. Couldn't move. Couldn't think, either. My brain just stored it all away for me. What it stored first were these words:

"Please wake up. I cast the spell and everything. I know you're okay. Of course you're okay. You're always okay."

Hands on me squeezing. Black gloves on a black cloak, squeaking so stupidly. Funny, now that I think of it. Why's the Organization so against touch? But she was holding me, resting her head on my chest, and after a hundred years I started settling into my body.

Weird. She was crying. It must've been one of those things where our bodies just _do_ things. We sweat when we exert ourselves and we throw up when those tiny viruses get inside of us and we end up sick.

Bodies, nothing more. Nothing but bodies in space.

On the greatest rock in Neverland, the tear ducts of Xion started going off. The rest of her face followed. I managed to open my eyes for just a second. She was red, begging me to wake up, and my arm wanted to brush the tears from that red, red face because reasons, because there are a lot of biological functions, I don't know, Xion would know, she reads so many more books because she's beautiful and smart and so much better than me and I wanted to ask her, then, right there, on Neverland's edge, to explain why my eyes were watering too and weren't stopping.

My lips were dry at first. It came out as a rasp. Xion must've heard something, I guess, because she looked at me and her eyes were stained blue glass.

Stained blue glass. So many shades and so many colors inside her eyes, so many yellows and greens.

Maybe that's how it feels to look into the shallow waters of an ocean. I've only dreamed oceans. But she, she's always been there in the dream with me.

"You're always okay," she said again, and I finally, fully came to myself. All the pain of the Darkside and the dull ache of the Neverland toss clawed at my head and I tried to fight them, had to fight them, because I couldn't stand if she cried any longer.

I licked my lips. Looked up into those billion-blue eyes, brimming with tears.

"I'm okay," I said, and she burst out laughing.

“Yeah,” she said, struggling to talk, sobbing, laughing, “Yeah. Of course you are.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “You’re always okay.”

* * *

 

Everything is out of sync. It's just a fact: different worlds have different times. Some places, it's always dawn or twilight. Other worlds have longer nights, shorter days, or a cycle totally out of sync with all the rest. Different times, different worlds, but--day or night--a sky that I could always recognize when I bothered to look up.

Floating in the Neverland air with Xion over the foaming ocean, I wondered if I should look up more.

The moon's reflection shimmered on the ocean, full and golden and--yeah--round, just like she'd promised. It floated in two seas, of water and of stars. Or were those really other worlds out there, like Axel said? It was hard to imagine that there were so many waiting for us.

No sound but waves and--maybe I imagined it--our own breathing. No smell but ocean brine and--maybe--perfume.

Did Xion wear perfume? I'd never noticed before. Maybe I was just oblivious.

I started obsessing over distance again. Was I too close to her? She wasn't looking at me. Was I weird for looking at her? Should I mention the perfume? What if she thought I was being a creep? _You were smelling me?_

What a joke. I was supposed to be thinking about the moon and all I could think about was her, with her black hair up against the night sky, surrounded by stars.

Xion turned in the air, caught my eyes before I could look away. Then she took my wrists in her hand, leaned in and--

\--she closed the distance.

It was only for a second, wasn't it? Why could I feel it for hours? Why can I feel it even now?

Out of sync are the skies

and her stained glass eyes,

and our nervous first kiss

arm in arm

floating in bliss.


End file.
